


Rites of passage

by clottedcreamfudge



Series: Tooth-rotting Malec nonsense [15]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beaches, Day At The Beach, Did I mention that these guys are very in love?, Flirting, Fluff, Immortality, Kissing, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Romance, Seaside, Sharing Body Heat, Storms, Sunrises, Thunder and Lightning, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Umbrellas, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clottedcreamfudge/pseuds/clottedcreamfudge
Summary: “Everyone’s staring at my runes,” Alec says flatly, looking horribly uncomfortable in spite of how positivelyVictorianthe shorts Magnus summoned for him are. Magnus narrows his eyes at his boyfriend, who likes to forget that he’s an incredibly fit, tall, chiselled man with abs for days; people arenotstaring at his runes.“I think they’re staring at your rippling abdominals, darling,” Magnus drawls, lying back on his beach towel and enjoying the way Alec’s eyes are automatically drawn to hismuchshorter shorts, very much on display where his mesh cover-up has fallen open at his waist. “If you don’t get flirted with in rapid-fire Spanish within the next hour, I shall eat my sunscreen.”➼Alec has never been to the beach. Magnus is appropriately horrified.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Tooth-rotting Malec nonsense [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170269
Comments: 50
Kudos: 271





	Rites of passage

“You’ve never been to the beach before,” Magnus repeats, tone stuck somewhere between stunned and genuinely disbelieving. His boyfriend has to be wrong; he probably just _forgot_ about the one time he went when he was a child or something. The idea that anyone could reach their 20s without having sunk their bare toes into warm sand is a truly shocking concept. Alec shrugs, seemingly unbothered by the earth-shattering nature of his confession, turning to the next page in his book.

“What, you think mom and dad had the Lightwood kids running drills in the sea?” he says drily, glancing up from the book to raise his eyebrows briefly in Magnus’s direction. “Too much like fun.” And with that absolute _bombshell_ , his eyes dart back to his book, once again engrossed. 

Magnus usually loves seeing Alec like this; when he’s concentrating so wholly on a novel, his eyebrows draw together just slightly, making him look adorably confused, and he often starts chewing on his bottom lip as he gets deeper into the story. Magnus had once watched him for over an hour, needing nothing else to occupy him but a glass of whisky and the view of this gorgeous man so intent on the words in front of him.

Now, however, he finds himself completely unable to focus on the joy of it.

“Well, that’s preposterous,” he says flatly, putting down his drink and smartly tugging the book out of Alec’s hands. He looks up in confusion, and Magnus’s heart does something complicated in his chest at the sight of him - all ruffled, wild hair and furrowed brow. He’s breathtaking like this, but Magnus thinks he’d probably be even more delectable on a sunny beach in Mallorca. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to rectify this immediately, darling. I suppose it’s pointless to ask if you have any swimming trunks in your blacker-than-black Shadowhunter wardrobe?”

“Why would I need swimming trunks?” Alec asks slowly, but he goes easily when Magnus pulls him to his feet, stepping closer so they’re toe to toe. Alec steadies himself automatically with his hands on Magnus’s waist, the heat of his broad palms seeping through the smartly pressed silk almost immediately.

“I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question,” Magnus says with a raised eyebrow, and while Alec rolls his eyes, he’s smiling just a little; he rarely argues when Magnus is one of his fanciful moods, especially when he’s so obviously determined to fix some perceived horror in Alec’s past.

But _really_. What absolute madness to never have dipped one’s toes in sun-warmed salt water, to have never felt that particular quality of sunlight on one’s skin that can only come from its having been reflected back from the azure surface of the ocean. The boy’s probably never had his picnic food stolen by any bird more exotic than an inner city pigeon. Magnus cannot let this stand unchallenged. 

“I assume your customary black attire will be in session?” Magnus asks with a sigh, not waiting for a response before he’s waving a hand and summoning the necessary items from a nearby boutique. He has shares in this one, so they tend to forgive the odd bit of stock disappearing from their back office and mysteriously ending up in Magnus’s possession.

“Magnus,” Alec starts, sounding off-kilter but indulgent, and Magnus leans up to silence him with a soft press of his lips.

“We have the weekend off,” Magnus murmurs, bringing both of his hands up to frame Alexander’s now-smiling face. “Allow me a moment to indulge my more dramatic proclivities.” Alec snorts, but something in his shoulders seems to unwind and relax under Magnus’s hands as he runs them down Alec’s neck and over his chest.

“ _All_ your proclivities are dramatic,” he says drily. Magnus can’t exactly disagree, so he just kisses Alec quiet. It works remarkably well, as usual.

➼

“Everyone’s staring at my runes,” Alec says flatly, looking horribly uncomfortable in spite of how positively _Victorian_ the shorts Magnus summoned for him are. Magnus narrows his eyes at his boyfriend, who likes to forget that he’s an incredibly fit, tall, chiselled man with abs for days; people are _not_ staring at his runes.

“I think they’re staring at your rippling abdominals, darling,” Magnus drawls, lying back on his beach towel and enjoying the way Alec’s eyes are automatically drawn to his _much_ shorter shorts, very much on display where his mesh cover-up has fallen open at his waist. “If you don’t get flirted with in rapid-fire Spanish within the next hour, I shall eat my sunscreen.”

“Shut up, that’s not going to happen,” Alec mumbles, flopping down in the sand next to Magnus and falling back on his elbows. A few women in bikinis go past, eyes darting between the two of them with blatant interest, and Magnus grins, though his eyes slide immediately away from them to land on his boyfriend. It’s not a hardship. Alec is still propped up on his elbows and Magnus isn’t surprised when he sees one of the women falter slightly when he shifts in the sand, holding himself up with one arm as he brushes a few errant grains off his stomach. Magnus should tell him it’s a lost cause - they’re on a _beach_ , for Lilith’s sake - but he finds he rather enjoys the flutter of muscle beneath pale skin as Alec moves. The woman clearly does as well, and she looks a little deflated when her friends drag her away; he finds he cannot blame her.

“My darling, it’s already a work in progress,” he says calmly, and Alec glances over at the women, scowl deepening as a flush starts to rise up his neck.

“Stop flirting with people while we’re on vacation,” he grumbles, having caught Magnus’s dazzling grin, but he obviously doesn’t mean it. He _can’t_ mean it. Alec knows what it looks like when Magnus flirts, and it isn’t usually just a smile. He rolls over so he’s on his side facing Alec and lets his fingers trail over those delightful abs, as though helping him brush off the sand there. In reality, he’s doing nothing of the sort, of course; why would he be helpful when he can enjoy himself instead? Alec’s stomach muscles contract and Magnus’s grin widens.

“I’m not flirting with anyone,” he says mildly, “but I can start if you’d like.” He lets his fingers trail a little lower and Alec bats his hand away, looking around in mild panic, as though someone on this mundane beach is going to have a problem with two men vaguely touching each other up. As though some people here wouldn’t _pay_ to see that.

“Magnus, we’re in _public,_ ” he hisses, and he’s so delightfully red now that Magnus finds himself laughing in spite of himself. He moves his hand away and situates himself back on his beach towel, still beaming.

“That we are, darling,” he agrees, “but that’s not to say we have to remain that way if the mood takes us.” Alec makes a wounded noise and flops onto his back, flinging one arm over his eyes - whether this is to shield his retinas from the sun or to hide his mounting embarrassment, Magnus couldn’t begin to guess.

He could, actually. It’s definitely both.

Magnus behaves himself after that; this was never about making Alec feel uncomfortable or inappropriately horny on a beach in Mallorca, but rather to ensure he was able to enjoy a new experience. The joy of doing nothing in the sun, with either a loved one or a good book in one’s arms, and the pleasant heat of well-warmed sand at one’s back.

Alec has brought a book, sadly, which makes the other option less likely. He’s engrossed in it very quickly, diving back in where he left off at the apartment, after having been pulled from it so rudely by Magnus and his eager sentimentality. Magnus watches him here too, and realises the pastime has only increased in its enjoyment with a change of setting. Alec is brighter here, although his frown and the absent-minded chewing of his lower lip continues just as it always does, but the sunlight and golden sand only serve to remind Magnus of just how ethereally beautiful Alec is in just about every light. This one suits him very well.

Magnus wonders just how much better Alec’s going to look once he gets him wet.

➼

“I don’t want to go in there,” Alec says stubbornly, as though saying things like that has ever made Magnus stop what he’s doing before. Of course, if Alec actually _meant_ it, he’d stop in a heartbeat, but Magnus knows Alec well enough by now to know that he’s resisting on autopilot. He’s not afraid of water, or the unknown, or of being consumed in his 6-foot-3 entirety by some kind of killer shark - no. He’s being stubborn because Magnus stopped him from reading his book for twenty minutes so he can go for a brief swim with his boyfriend. A heinous crime.

“Are you telling me,” Magnus drawls, shrugging the cover-up off his shoulders and letting it fall to the ground, “that you have absolutely no vested interest in seeing me soaking wet in the Mediterranean?” Alec flushes, mouth opening just slightly as his eyes travel automatically down Magnus’s body. It’s still gratifying, even after all these months, to know that Alec really cannot keep himself from doing these things.

“I-” Alec closes his mouth and swallows, then crosses his arms and looks away with a sigh. “Fine. But this isn’t because of _that_.”

“Then you would have done better to capitulate before I brought it up,” Magnus says lightly, before pulling Alec’s hand from its rigid position against his chest and dragging him towards the sea.

“My book-”

“Will be fine, Alexander,” Magnus soothes, waving a hand towards their little nest of towels, sunscreen, and various sundry items with a flicker of pale blue sparks. “Hidden from mundane eyes. If anyone comes within a foot of our little hideout, they will find themselves inexplicably drawn elsewhere.” This seems to pacify Alec, and he follows a little more willingly after that, wading up to his shins and then almost immediately up to his waist in the warm water.

“I was expecting it to be colder,” he admits, skimming his fingers over the surface of the water absent-mindedly. Magnus smiles slowly at him and then, quite without warning, closes the space between them by _leaping_ into Alec’s arms. “What the - _Magnus,_ ” Alec yelps, catching him on autopilot and allowing Magnus to wrap dripping wet arms around his neck to drag them closer together.

“I’m just trying to make sure this is a wholly positive experience for you,” Magnus says with one of those grins that he knows Alec is weak for. Alec smiles back automatically, and it spreads across his face like a ripple moving away from a raindrop. Magnus is caught by it, and how he manages to forget _every time_ that Alec makes him weak too is completely beyond him.

Then Alec very pointedly drops Magnus back in the water.

“That was incredibly undignified,” Magnus says when he eventually emerges from the azure depths, pushing the hair out of his eyes with a glare - but the look slides off his face with alarming speed when he sees just how hard Alec’s laughing. At _him_ , yes, but seeing him so open in his enjoyment never fails to take Magnus’s breath away. To think that Magnus is allowed to have such beauty in his life is something he’s unlikely to get used to any time soon - possibly ever. And ‘ever’ is quite a considerable time frame for him.

“How is your makeup still perfect?” Alec asks between little huffs of breathless laughter, winding down from the hysterics of a few moments ago as he hunkers down a little and pulls Magnus back towards his chest; he doesn’t look apologetic, but Magnus doesn’t mind too much.

“My makeup hasn’t run since the summer of 1892,” he says loftily, and for some reason this just makes Alec’s expression turn horribly fond. Magnus is forced to dunk him - he has absolutely no choice in the matter.

➼

Once they get back to their little patch of glamoured space, there’s barely anybody on the beach anymore, even though it’s not even lunchtime. There’s a crackling in the air, a damp electricity that has absolutely nothing to do with the body of water at their backs and everything to do with an oncoming storm. 

“Is it safe to be out here still?” Alec asks, slumping down into the sand with apparently very little care as to the actual answer to his question. He’s completely soaked from their impromptu wrestling match in the water, and remembering the high, bright laughter it had dragged out of him still makes Magnus feel a little bit hot somewhere inside his ribcage. He tells himself it’s because his stunningly attractive boyfriend is essentially half naked and wet in front of him, and not because there’s something he has fully identified as _dangerous affection_ swelling in his heart, growing larger and harder to ignore with every second they spend in each other’s presence.

Magnus, in his many years on this earth, has become quite the expert at ignoring things.

“The storm will be here soon,” Magnus says with a careless wave of his hand, summoning up a large umbrella that he props up over them both as he himself flops onto the sand. “Fortunately for you, you have the safety and protection of someone _quite magical_.” Alec flushes and rolls his eyes, and Magnus tries not to snicker.

“I should never have told you about that,” he says with a sigh, then rolls over to press a kiss to the amused curve of Magnus’s mouth.

The storm comes quickly after that, dark clouds blocking out the sun and the tremor of distant thunder pulling itself closer with every bright tendril of lightning it throws to the ground. Magnus has already dried them off and wrapped them both in a thick blanket to ward off the slight chill the clouds bring with them, but he imagines the hard, familiar press of Alec’s chest against his back would have accomplished much the same thing. His boyfriend’s arms around his waist, Magnus watches the storm roll in with a simmering awe and excitement; he thinks he could live for millennia and the raw power of such an event could never be anything less than incredible to him.

The rain hits then, like a curtain being swept aside by some great, unseen hand; fat droplets make short work of the dry sand, turning it very quickly to something malleable, and Magnus stares raptly at where the suddenly roiling sea absorbs its kin with ease. He and Alec stay dry where they are, the umbrella big enough for both of them, Magnus’s magic more than a match for any errant droplets that try to pierce the bubble of calm he’s created for them here.

“I love storms,” Alec murmurs, and Magnus thinks from the tone of it that he’s almost forgotten Magnus is here; the words were not necessarily meant to have been spoken aloud, just a stray thought that passed across Alec’s mind and meandered its way to his vocal chords. Magnus doesn’t respond - isn’t sure he needs to - but leans back a little more firmly against Alec’s chest in solidarity with the words. The tightening of Alec’s arms around him has that heat in his chest flaring up, and he can’t _not_ say it now, he thinks; it’s too much to contain any longer without someone to share it with.

“I love you, Alexander,” he says quietly. He feels more than hears the slight intake of breath the man behind him makes, and closes his eyes for just a moment to try and preserve himself. To try and preserve _this;_ the first time he told Alec what this means to him, in spite of what it might cost an immortal to give something like that so freely. “You don’t have to-”

“I love you too,” Alec says, just as quietly, barely audible now over the storm raging outside their bubble of quietude. Magnus’s heart, already straining with the weight of what he feels, stutters over its next beat, before settling into a new rhythm; nothing’s changed, and yet it feels as though everything has. “So much, Magnus, you just-” Apparently frustrated with his inability to find the right words, Alec turns Magnus suddenly in his arms, pulling him down so their bodies are flush against one another, still wrapped in their blanket on the soft sand. The look on Alec’s face is open and determined, and Magnus sees more there than he was expecting. He thinks that, just maybe, he sees a lifetime of _exactly this_ in Alec’s eyes.

They kiss slowly, none of the wildness of what’s happening around them piercing the slow contentment that sinks into the bones of them, their shared heartbeats steady with the truth of what they mean to each other.

“I love you,” Magnus says when he pulls away - finds himself saying it again into the space between their lips, then again into the curve of Alec’s throat. He can’t say it enough, and Alec seems to understand, responding to every iteration with an ease that speaks of the simplicity of it. Alec loves Magnus. Magnus loves Alec. There is nothing else right now that matters more.

➼

They stay on the beach for quite some time, but when they portal back, the sun is just rising over the city of New York. They both need to shower - magic can only do so much when it comes to sand, unfortunately - but neither of them seems able to pull away from the other long enough to get there. Instead, they stand on the balcony, still completely wrapped up in each other, trading lazy kisses and watching the sun come up.

This light, too, is a good look on Alec, Magnus realises - not that he’d ever doubted it. The sureness that now sits on his features - a contentment borne of knowing something you feel is returned - is emphasised by the hazy morning quality of the light that falls across his face. His jawline and cheekbones look even more pronounced than usual, his eyes some indefinable colour that seems all the more liquid and beautiful for how muddled it is. 

“Thanks for taking me to the beach, Magnus,” Alec says softly, kissing him again before Magnus can respond, pulling away after a second with a slight grimace. “Shower? I have sand in places nobody should have sand.” Magnus nods, somehow unable to say anything past the lump in his throat, and lets himself be gently led to the shower by the love of his life. 

(He doesn’t think that’s too dramatic.)

Looking back at what he’s felt before now, he’s not sure there’s ever been anything quite like this; the settled feeling of Alec’s arms around him, pulling him under the spray and kissing him like they have hundreds of tomorrows, is brand new in every way possible. The storm they left behind is still with them somehow, the electricity of it in every point of contact. Magnus feels torn apart by it, kept together only by something as simple as the weight of Alec’s love around him.

Perhaps, if he is very lucky and very clever indeed, he can have this for something a little bit more like _forever_. With soap suds in his hair and Alec’s mouth on his, Magnus lets himself think.

There’s no rush. But yes. Hundreds upon _thousands_ of tomorrows, perhaps.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a combination of three prompts, written pretty much entirely through a series of sprints, supported by some TOP QUALITY PEOPLE. Prompts used here were "watching a sunrise/sunset", "sharing an umbrella" and "at the beach". This was an excuse to put Alec in shorts, get them both wet, and then have a disgusting amount of feelings.


End file.
